Kelly Taylor was on her way home to Demorest Sunday after a relaxing Mother’s Day weekend trip to the beach when her 18-year old stepdaughter Donna called in a panic. Just moments before, she had found the family’s 17-year old cat Midnight standing on the porch with a knife stuck in his back. “I had to keep telling her to slow down because she was screaming and crying,” Kelly recalls, “She didn’t know what to do.”
Five hours away, her mind reeling with questions and her heart breaking for the beloved family pet, Kelly instructed her children to take Midnight to the vet. Once he was there it was clear there was little they could do. X-rays would determine how much damage had been done but the knife had to come out and, to do that, Midnight would have to be put to sleep. “We collectively decided that he wouldn’t be able to make it through the anesthesia as old as he was and the shape he was in,” Kelly says. So, the family made the only decision they could – they put Midnight down.
Kelly crys as she recounts the nightmarish story and struggles to comprehend how anyone could do such a thing. “He was the sweetest cat in the world and I don’t understand,” she says. “I don’t understand the evil in the world that could make somebody do this.”
Now the family is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person or persons responsible. They filed a report with the Habersham County Sheriff’s Office and hope the knife will provide clues as to who did it.
It’s easy to understand the substantial reward and effort when you consider the violence behind Midnight’s death and the fact he was more than a pet, he was part of the family.
Love and loss
The black bundle of fur bounded into their lives when he was just six weeks old. Kelly adopted him from a woman at her daughter McCall’s preschool. It was the young girl’s first pet. She named him Midnight because of his sleek, darker than night coat. His name fit his appearance, but not his personality. Midnight brought a lot of light into their lives.
As more pets entered the home he took care of them. He bathed their little cat, Tink, and befriended the family’s Maltese. Midnight stayed mostly indoors but the Taylors did let him explore the outdoors near their house in the Wayward Winds subdivision. Kelly says he never strayed far from the house and was not prone to roam the neighborhood causing a nuisance. She never received any complaints. “Someone had to have come on our property to do this,” she says with alarm.
The Taylors not only lost their beloved pet on Mother’s Day, Kelly says they also lost their sense of security. “Anybody who can do something like that to an animal, there’s no telling what they might do.”
She acknowledges Midnight was old but says he still had a lot of life left in him. The family had discussed the possibility of maybe one day having to put him down if he became so old and feeble that he lost his quality of life but, not now, not like this. “He had to die suffering and he died without having us there to comfort him,” she says mournfully.
The family plans to bury Midnight in the backyard near the house that once sheltered him, within sight of those who cared for and loved him. Still, Kelly says laying him to rest won’t allow her family to rest; not until whoever did this is caught.
